'Guardian Angel' finds 'little miracles' as bond endures

Thursday

ORMOND BEACH — Tom Cox had plans to meet his longtime friend Jill Matthew for a bike ride on a recent afternoon, but looming storm clouds were threatening to intervene.

When the dark skies cleared, just in time, Cox gestured at the sun and acknowledged yet another “Jill moment.” Cox coined the term to describe occasional instances of serendipitous luck that have marked nearly a decade he has spent as a dedicated, if unofficial, caregiver for Matthew, a former co-worker now wheelchair-bound and severely disabled by strokes and a heart attack in 2008.

“It describes the tiny little miracles of life that I cannot explain,” said Cox, 60, of Ormond Beach, an accountant and CPA for Brown & Brown. “With Jill, those types of things just seem to happen.”

Every week, barring the occasional scheduling conflict, Cox pedals his custom-made bicycle equipped to accommodate Matthew’s wheelchair from a nearby storage unit to the entrance of Opis Bridgeview Center, the nursing home where Matthew, 50, has lived since 2009.

“Tom is like a guardian angel, sent from above,” said Sonia, 53, of Daytona Beach. “He’s a gift from God.”

Walking purposefully through the nursing center, Cox exchanges cheerful greetings with almost every staff member he passes, a fixture on a first-name basis that might rival full-time employees. In Matthew’s room, Cox sometimes will lead her through simple exercises to build her faded motor skills. On most days, however, he guides her wheelchair outside to the awaiting bicycle.

Those are the best days, everyone agrees.

“To get out, to get some fresh air,” Matthew said on a recent afternoon, her voice halting, barely above a whisper. “There’s nothing better. I love it.”

Adorned in a floppy straw hat to protect her from the sun, Matthew is the quiet one in the relationship, taking in the scene with her eyes as Cox chatters about foliage, birds or a whiff of cooling breeze. When an onlooker remarks about Cox’s talkative side, Matthew rolls her eyes in a comical expression, followed by more soft words: “Oh, yes.”

Cox, meanwhile, is in the midst of planning the day’s itinerary:

“I say we go west,” he tells her, suggesting a trek through Ormond Beach’s Central Park. “We can stop in the hammock and then come back. Then, if you’re up for it, we can say hello to the river.”

And so it goes, as the friends make a leisurely 90-minute loop.

“Look at the flowers,” Cox said, pointing. “Are those mums?"

In a few moments, they stop to savor the view in Central Park.

Later, Cox explains the origin of his weekly visits.

“Jill was at Bridgeview, literally two miles from my home,” he said. “So I’d go to church on Sundays and I would stop in to see her, just to visit. Because, as the saying goes, ‘You can pray for somebody, but somebody’s praying that you’ll just stop by.’”

Cox had met Matthew in 1991, when they were both employed by the social services organization ACT, Corp., now known as Stewart-Marchman-ACT Behavioral Healthcare. A single mother of three children, she impressed him by exhibiting the discipline and time-management skills to complete a degree in public administration at the University of Central Florida, work and raise a family, Cox recalls now.

When the stroke happened, Cox said, he told her, “You deserve a better hand than you’ve been dealt and if I can make your life better, I’m going to do it.”

In the beginning, that involved taking Matthew outside to push her wheelchair in the fresh air. In 2014, Cox bought the wheelchair-accessible tandem bike, imported from Holland with shipping help from a Dutch village in Michigan, Cox said. He also uses the bike for excursions with his mother, age 101.

The time that her husband spends with others is no imposition, said Karen Cox, his wife.

“As his wife, I get spoiled when I’m down,” she said. “He just has this tendency to always want to care. He’s a busy man, and I don’t know how he makes the time but always does.

“He takes his mom, takes Jill, to church with us. We do as much as we can involve her with our family and be involved with her family. It’s really like an extra family that we’ve gotten to know through the years and it’s a beautiful thing.”

As befitting family, Cox attended Matthew’s 50th birthday celebration last August, although he had expected to miss it because he was required to be at his office for work. That changed when the office was plunged into darkness because of an unexpected power outage.

“So I made it to Jill’s birthday party,” Cox said.

Just call it another “Jill moment.”

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